Chapter 23

Twelve years old. I lay in the long grass and watched a frog that sat on a rock beside the stream. I'd had my eye on that frog for over half an hour now. It was coming home with me, back to the school barracks. I hadn't decided exactly what I'd do with it there, though the possibility of putting it into the air vents that served the instructor's bedrooms had occurred to me.

The early afternoon sun beat down on my back and head. I should have brought out a hat with me. Could my brain boil inside my skull? Sweat beaded on my back between my shoulder blades but I ignored both the prickle of that and the idea of my brain boiling and lay completely still, not wanting to scare away the frog. This must be how it felt to be a cat, lying in ambush. I recalled the instructor explaining the point of drill to us and now I understood it. Total discipline. Total control of your body.

The frog also stayed perfectly still. Could it be asleep? Did frogs sleep? Well of course they did, everything slept. Except the Chiamajan. We'd learnt that in class. Nothing on that planet slept. How strange is that? No sleep. No dreams. I'd hate not to dream. I still sometimes dreamt of my mother, but not often now. Her face had grown misty, her voice faded. Lately I seemed to dream about girls a lot. And almost every night I dreamt about the sky.

A call sharp as a talon, high above, made me roll over and look up into the sky, shading my eyes from the sun. I heard something plop into the water and swore. I just scared off the frog. So much for discipline.

There! I saw it, dark against the bright blue sky, circling lazily, just a flick of a wing now and again, as it floated on the air. A good day for it today. The heat rising from the baking ground made thermals to ride, saving all its strength for that screaming dive into the grass, stooping on some hapless rabbit or rodent. Grace and strength united within it. I'd never loved anything more than I loved the eagle.

The shot took it as I lay watching. A single crack and the eagle staggered in the sky. Then it was hurtling to the ground, not in a controlled deadly dive but pin wheeling in a graceless plunge, screaming. Screaming. No, it didn't scream. I screamed. I jumped to my feet, screaming.

I ran. Insane, wild, towards where the shot had come from. I heard voices and laughter and I burst through the grass to find a bunch of older kids, boys and girls, fifteen, sixteen year olds sitting and standing around. They all carried their training rifles.

"Why did you do that?" I yelled. Shrieked really. I hated my voice. Still so high. A child's voice.

They stared at me, then looked at each other and laughed.

"Why?" I demanded again. "WHY?" I knew I had tears on my face and those tears made them laugh even more. Stupid snivelling little boy.

"Target practice," one boy drawled and grinned. A big boy, broad shouldered and already six feet tall. He pointed the gun at me and said, "bam!" They all laughed again.

I screamed my rage and pain as I flew at him, wanting his blood, neither his gun nor his size deterring me. But I was a child and he was nearly a grown man. He lowered his rifle and when I got close he swatted me aside, knocking me right off my feet. I fell down into the grass, but scrambled up straight away to go after him again. Two of the other boys grabbed my arms.

"Hey, leave him alone," one of the girls said. "He's just a little kid."

I hated her for being right. I hated myself for not being as strong as them. For still having narrow shoulders and skinny arms. I wanted the strength to make them pay for what they did.

I bit the hand of one of the boys holding me and he swore and smacked me around the head. The boy on the other side I kicked in the shins and he let go too. I ran. Ran and ran, the tears streaming now. They didn't come after me, didn't bother wasting their time on a stupid little kid. They yelled a few threats but their voices soon faded.

I had to find the eagle. Could it still be alive? Don't be stupid, Jadeth. After the shot and the fall? It had to be dead. I stopped running, stood panting and looked around, tried to orient myself. I scrubbed the back of my hand across my face. Where had it landed? For the first time I noticed how every part of the meadow looked like every other part. Only the occasional BFR - I stopped in my thoughts, spoke aloud.

"Big fucking rock."

Only the occasional big fucking rock distinguished one place from another.

I remembered my lessons, and started to search systematically. It took me hours. The sun had dipped low by the time I found the eagle's shattered body. My tears had stopped hours ago while I searched but now they came back. The blood that soaked its feathers had already dried to rusty brown. The feathers looked darker down here on the ground, out of the sun that turned them gold.

Well, now what, Jadeth? I had to ask myself then. If I'd taken it back to barracks they'd have put the body in the incinerator and sent me to the shrink. So I did the only other thing I could, since leaving it for scavengers to rip apart was not an option. I dug in the earth with my hands, slicing my flesh on stones, not caring. Eventually I'd made a hole big enough to lay the eagle in and I lifted the dead weight into it. The weight of the bird surprised me; it seemed to try to pull me into the ground with it. I tried to arrange it with something like the grace it had displayed in the sky, tried to fold its smashed wings. Then one handful at a time I replaced the earth, covered the body, until I'd filled the small grave.

After I finished I sat, filthy bloodied hands with torn fingernails resting in my lap. I had stopped crying. No tears left. I kept looking at the ground because I never wanted to look at the empty sky again. I decided then that I would never play in the meadow again. I would never cry again. And I would never look at the sky again.

At last I stood up and trailed slowly back to the barracks. The duty officer gave me punishment detail for a week, for staying out beyond curfew. And then another week for giving her the DILLIGAF look. "Do I look like I give a fuck?" I never gave a fuck about anything or anyone else again. Not for a long time, not until...

The dream changed, and once again I knelt by a grave. A cold, dark hole in the long sweet grass. But this time my hands were full-grown and Ilyan lay in the grave. I covered him one handful at a time, until the dark earth hid even his blue eyes and golden hair. As I worked, the tears I thought had dried up long ago streamed down my face.

The sky is empty. Blue is grey now. And as I filled in the last handfuls of earth I woke up crying out his name and sobbing with rage.

Because I was still alive.

I woke in a cage. A cage too small for me sit up or to straighten my legs while lying down. It hung five meters above a stone floor, suspended by a single steel cable. Not stone, I realised, after looking at the floor, walls and ceiling for a while. Not stone, but rock. A cave, man made though, carved out into a rough cube. A couple of electric lamps on the walls provided me with some dim light.

A stab of pain reminded me about the wound in my leg. I pulled up the loose grey trousers I wore to find a bandage and a glance under that showed me the wound had been fully treated and looked to be healing well. Shame. The extent of the healing told me several days must have passed since... Since.

I lay down again, curled up, the only semi comfortable position possible. I let my right arm dangle down between the bars of the cage floor. Perhaps something lurked down there in the shadows and would leap up and bite my arm right off. That would be pretty funny. Then I'd bleed to death, which would be A O - fucking - kay with me.

I looked up at the cable supporting the cage. It ran though a pulley wheel, fixed into the rock by a single bolt. If I started swinging the cage maybe it could rip the bolt right out of the ceiling. Would the fall kill me? The cage had no apparent door. I must have been welded in to it. I couldn't expect to leave in a hurry then. Maybe I'd be left up here until I wasted away and my bones fell between the bars to plunge down and shatter on the rock below.

I'd never thought a lot about dying before. I'd thought a lot about making sure I didn't die. Could I really welcome death now? Shouldn't I be grateful that I'd survived?

No, because I hadn't 'survived'. I'd survived that time the assassins came into our camp, because I'd still been alive after the assassins died. That's not how it happened this time. This time I'd been allowed to live.

So no, I wouldn't be left up here to waste away. Someone had plans for me. Once they put them into effect, I got the feeling I'd soon wish for death.

Death. Ilyan's dead. My brain still found it hard to let the thought in. All of them dead. Jia, Rish, Maiga... I wondered if my still being alive would have ticked Maiga off. Scoring more points off her. All my friends. Dead.

And I failed. I failed to protect Ilyan. I'd pledged to protect him and at the moment of greatest danger, I'd left his side. Could I kill myself by shoving my hand right down my throat and choking myself? Or maybe I would I bleed to death if I ripped out my tongue?

I was so full of shit. If I really wanted to die I'd be dead or making it happen right now. So why did I want to live? There could only be one reason. I had a new job now. Pretty simple job description.

Revenge.

A grinding noise started somewhere above me and the cage began to move. Instinctively I grabbed at the bars. But it didn't fall. Rather it descended slowly, in a controlled way, until it stopped, hanging only a meter or so off the floor, swaying gently. I waited, in a crouch, coiled up, expectant. As if I could do actually do something.

A door in the rock wall opened and I saw a man framed in the doorway. The lights in the cell brightened as he walked in. He was a tall, thin man, in his thirties, wearing a dark blue one piece. He had mid brown skin, dark, neatly cropped hair and a refined face with a slender nose and delicate mouth.

No point in wasting time. I started to hate him immediately.

Three guards followed him in. Two took up position either side of me; another brought in a chair and placed it facing my cage.

"Good day, Sergeant," the man I hated said. "I am Major Imtiaz. I trust your wound is not troubling you too much."

Good thing I'd got that head start on hating him.

"Hello, Major. Excuse me for not standing up, but you seem to have me sealed into a small cage here. Perhaps instead I can just tell you to fuck off and die."

Imtiaz gave a small smile. My hatred found a new level.

"I will be conducting your interrogation."

"So we get to spend lots of time together? Oh goody."

There was something about him just brought out the major sarcasm reflex in me. I couldn't help it. Even Maiga only had about a tenth of the effect.

"How much time we spend together depends on how cooperative you're willing to be, Sergeant." He sat in the chair. He didn't look for the chair, I noticed. He didn't even glance around to make sure he wasn't about to put his skinny arse onto a whole lot of nothing. He just expected the chair to be there for him when he wanted to sit.

"I expect you're wondering why you are still alive."

"No, I'm wondering how long you'll be alive after I get out of this thing."

"Well I'm afraid that won't be for some time."

"Oh no." The needle broke off my sarcasm meter. "Please don't leave me here in the Steel Cage of Doom. Whatever shall I do?"

Imtiaz frowned and bent forward, apparently not enjoying being my straight man.

"Perhaps you don't understand the gravity of your situation, Sergeant."

"You know it's funny, ever since I woke up in a cage dangling five meters above a stone floor I've been thinking about gravity and my situation quite a lot."

"Very well." He stood up. "Since you seem determined to be so stubborn perhaps you need a reminder of why we are all here." He walked out of the room, taking one guard with him.

I glanced at the two soldiers left behind.

"So what's the food like around here, mates?"

They just stared straight through me. I noticed they both carried long insulated rods with prongs on the end attached to their belts. Oh lovely. I knew I'd be getting a nip from those later.

Imtiaz came back in and a moment later the third soldier followed him, pushing a large monitor screen mounted on a trolley. He placed it where I could get a good view and my stomach knotted as I realised what must be coming.

Imtiaz didn't speak. He touched a couple of panels on the back of the screen and a video playback started up. Wobbly, someone using a hand held recorder. Voices sounded in the background.

I recognised the room at once. The auditorium at the hospital. The room where we all died.

"Make sure you get them all." The order came from somewhere behind the camera operator.

The operator obeyed, sweeping the camera over the bodies on the floor. Some of them I didn't know, they must have been medical officers from the hospital. But I barely noticed them anyway as the dead bodies of my friends passed across the screen in front of me.

Diliph, Akil, Esha - the world's most enthusiast people. Tanashi, our precious doc. So smart, so cool. At least she didn't know Rish bought it too. Vimal, our brave young knight. And Jia, looking almost peaceful, as if she was sleeping. My princess.

Imtiaz paused the picture on Jia.

"You were hot for her, weren't you?"

I glared at him, glared pure burning hate.

"Did you ever get to screw her?"

The vulgarity coming from his refined mouth somehow made it more vile and I wanted to smash his face until his own C.O. wouldn't recognise him. He smiled as I grabbed at the bars thrusting forward, desperate to get at him.

He resumed the playback and moved on to... I turned away. I couldn't look at Ilyan's dead face, without it bringing back the moment his blue eyes turned grey. Without it bringing back the dream of burying his grey and cold body in the heavy, chilled earth.

He's gone. Ilyan is gone. All for nothing.

"Did you ever get to screw him?"

I snarled and this time threw myself in earnest at the bars of the cage, reaching for Imtiaz. If I could grab him, pull him close, I could crush his forehead against the cage. Smash jagged bits of skull into his brain. Even if it didn't kill him he'd spend the rest of his life being spoon-fed. That would wipe the smug bastard smile off his face.

But I couldn't reach and he just laughed at me as the cage swung around.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it? To fuck him? Is that why you couldn't get along with his woman?"

How did he know about that? About any of it? Is this... this gossip what Military Intelligence spent hours extracting from poor Rin before they killed him? You'd think they'd have had more important things to ask about.

Then I found out. I found out where they got all the gossip. And how they found us. I'd assumed someone at the hospital had betrayed us.

I was wrong.

On the screen, I saw myself, lying unconscious beside Ilyan's dead body. The camera focused on my pale face, as a couple of medics bent over me, working on my leg. And somewhere away from the camera I heard a voice. A voice I knew.

"What are you doing? You should kill him! He's very dangerous!"

I gasped and stared at the screen, I wanted to yell at Imtiaz to replay the moment, but he didn't need to. The camera viewfinder swung around and showed who had spoken.

Tesla.

Tesla looked pale and nervous, but very much alive. He had blood on his clothes, but I knew it must be Rish's blood, not Tesla's own. Rish. He'd tried to tell me, but I just hadn't understood, because even seeing Tesla standing alive and unhurt among the bodies, I could still barely accept the truth.

Tesla? Incredible. Impossible. He'd followed Ilyan from the start, called him a friend. How could he turn on Ilyan? And for what? Money? Had he sold us out to High Command for a big bag of cash?

The camera operator addressed Tesla, answering his plea to finish me off.

"Orders. We need one alive. Of course, there's an alternative --"

"No!" Tesla snapped, looking partly scared, partly angry. "No! I was promised!"

"Then get out of here and stop trying to interfere. Your transport is waiting."

Tesla cast a last worried look at the floor and turned away. Imtiaz stopped the playback and turned to me.

"Are you ready to be more sensible now, Jadeth?" He looked all po-faced and severe. Like an instructor who'd just beasted me for taking the piss. "Are you ready to learn why you are still alive?"

I already knew and I no longer wished to die, because I now had a new reason to live. Find him. Hunt Tesla down and make him pay. Make him feel the pain of every one of their deaths twenty times over, one hundred times. Make him feel the pain I had in my heart. With one difference. His pain would end. When I decided to end it. He'd be grateful then, for death. He'd beg for it.

I looked up at Imtiaz, who seemed taken aback for a moment. Perhaps afraid of what he saw in my eyes. He had reason to be afraid, stood there between me and Tesla. However, he gathered himself and started talking, pacing around. I noticed he carefully kept well out of my reach.

"The effect of Ilyan's campaign is causing High Command severe problems. We need to persuade all those people who fell for his ridiculous prediction to return to their posts."

"It's too late for that and you know it."

"High Command thinks otherwise."

"High Command couldn't pour sand out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel."

He ignored that remark and kept pacing. He's nervous, I realised suddenly. He doesn't really believe the words he's mouthing any more than I do.

"We need someone who was close to Ilyan to denounce him."

"Well you've got weasel boy," I said, nodding at the paused playback that still showed Tesla's retreating back. But Imtiaz shook his head.

"Not part of his deal. We need someone else." He stopped and looked at me. "We need you. The ordinary soldiers will listen to you. They'll believe you more than any officer." He smiled. "I believe Ilyan found you useful for the same reason."

"Listen, pal, if you think I'm going to denounce Ilyan you can shove that idea up your arse right now. I know the truth, I've seen the data."

"And I'm sure you're fully qualified to understand complex intelligence data."

Oh, so he could be sarcastic too, huh? I could beat him at that game.

"He explained it to me. But hey, maybe you're right, maybe he got it wrong. Maybe they're actually planning a surprise party for us! Instead of 'massive fleet of warships' maybe it should actually say 'ice cream cake'?"

He ignored me again and took a very slim Snapper out of his pocket.

"High Command suggests you say the following. That Ilyan had ambitions to seize power from High Command. That he considered himself a religious figure, messianic. That he made everyone call him The Prophet."

I almost laughed at that last part.

"He hated being called a Prophet!"

Imtiaz glanced at me and went on. "That he was sexually involved with all of the women in your group, perhaps the men too. That he insisted they had to have sex with him to increase his mystical power and energy."

"Where the fuck do you get this crap from?" I demanded.

"He solicited donations from the soldiers he preached to. He used this money to travel in luxury."

Standard stuff to tear down a man's reputation, smear his name. The idea of him taking money from the common soldiers though, that might be the one that made me sickest. He wouldn't even take money from me.

"Major." I interrupted as he took a breath to go on. "Don't waste your breath. If you think you can make me stand up and say all that shit to a court or in front of a camera, you need your fucking head examined. Tesla's the traitor, not me."

Imtiaz gave me a thin smile. "We will see, Jadeth." He glanced at the guards on either side of the cage. "Soften him up. I will return later." He turned and stalked out.

One of the guards followed him and came back a few minutes later, carrying a bucket of water. I knew what he'd brought that for and I cringed back instinctively. Sure enough, a second later freezing cold water soaked me. The other two guards stepped up and poked their long, pronged staffs through the bars.

The first jolt of electricity slammed me hard into the cage bars. I banged my head and fell into a darkness full of stars.

~/~/~

Routine. My life had been all about routine from the get go. School and basic training. Even on active service a lot of it is still boring routine, get up, eat, clean stuff, eat, clean more stuff, eat, play cards, sleep. Sometimes some fighting or sex showed up to break the routine, but less often than you'd think. Or in the sex case, less often than you'd hope.

With Ilyan's group I'd been in a routine most of the time too and that had suited me fine. Get up, eat, hike around, eat, hike some more, eat, talk to soldiers, sleep.

Now I had yet another routine. Wake up, get tortured, eat, get tortured a lot more, slump into unconsciousness.

And routine is the reason I knew it wouldn't work. You can get used to anything they say. Anything, even including being zapped with an electric prod. If they really wanted to break you, they didn't let a routine get established, they wrong footed you at every turn to keep you off balance.

These guys weren't really trying. Major Imtiaz, he seemed like he had plenty of experience at this game, enjoyed it even. But somehow his heart just wasn't in it now. He showed up every day and between the electro shocks, he kept on demanding I denounce Ilyan and telling me about the fabulous prizes on offer if I did it. But he seemed worried. More than once, he was interrupted in the middle of a session and hurried out of the room, only to return a short time later looking even more distracted.

I could only guess at why and only hope that I guessed right. High Command's world had started to fall down around their ears. Even if I gave in and stood in front of a camera, told everyone that Ilyan shagged horses and sacrificed babies, it would make no difference now.

~/~/~

One day, after an unknowable number of days, the routine broke.

I woke to rumbling noise and the room shaking hard enough to set my cage swinging on its cable and make some stone dust fall from the bolt securing the pulley into the rock above me. I swear the cage actually slipped downwards just a bit, making me look up nervously.

The vibration and the noise died away. A ship, I thought. A ship just took off. And a sudden panicky feeling hit me.

"Hello?" I yelled. "Hello? Hey, come in here, you fuckers!" Usually when I yelled they came in lowered the cage, threw water on me and maybe zapped me a couple of times, just for a laugh, then left me to shiver cold and wet. Not this time.

I waited for a while, not ready to face the truth maybe. I got hungry, thirsty, and hoarse from yelling and I finally accepted it. They'd gone. I was alone. Alone and welded into a small cage five metres off the ground. Peachy.

Right. Right. Just had to think of a way out of this. I only had the cage itself to work with. I groaned and held my head for a moment. I had a headache with yelling and thirst, making it hard to concentrate. Frustrated I grabbed the bars and shook them, making the cage swing. An alarming creaking came from above, quickly followed by a small shower of stone dust. I let some of the dust land on my hand and closed my fist over it, feeling the grit in my palm. I looked up at the steel cable in the pulley wheel. The cable reached across the ceiling, secured by brackets. Several meters of cable before it vanished into a hole in the wall. I looked further up, at the bolt that secured the pulley into the rock itself.

I had an idea. A stupid, dangerous and potentially fatal idea. But still more fun than staying up here and dying of dehydration, so I might as well try it.

I started swinging the cage, throwing my weight first to one side and then the other. I only had about a meter of cable to play with between the cage and the pulley, but I still managed to get a good swing going.

The bolt ground away at the stone around it and more dust and even flakes and chips of rock rained onto me. The cage slipped with a violent jerk and then it happened in a rush. The bolt tore clear of the rock, the hole it rested in worn too wide by my swinging. I curled into a ball, hands over my head and screamed out a battle cry as the cage went into free fall. Brackets that had held the cable in place across the ceiling pinged off one after another as the weight of the cage and me ripped them out. The cage smashed into the stone wall, catching a corner, bouncing and hitting again, not as hard, before coming to rest at last.

I lay still for a long time, panting, waiting to see if I would fall any more, or get hit by something heavy. Nothing happened, so I cautiously opened my eyes. I did an inventory of myself. Everything intact, though I suspected I'd soon have some bruises in strange places and I'd bitten my tongue when the cage smashed into the wall.

Looking down I estimated a two-meter drop to the floor. Easy. First though I still had to get out of this cage. Crashing into the wall had bent and distorted the bars enough to create a gap I thought I could maybe squeeze through, but now that gap lay against the wall.

That turned out to be the trickiest part of the whole damn business. I had to go and push the cage away from the wall, while at the same time turning it to rest a different side against the wall. This involved a lot of throwing my weight around and contorting myself into strange positions, but at last it worked. The cage wobbled on a corner for just a moment and then flipped to rest on a different side and left the gap facing the air.

No sense in waiting around looking at it. I started to squeeze out. Getting my shoulders through was agony and I tore a couple of gouges in them and in my arms as I came through. At last they were free and the rest of my body followed quickly. I hung onto the sides of the cage like a monkey until I got my feet clear. Then I took a deep breath and dropped to the floor.

When I tried the cell door I found it open. Good thing too. It would have ended up as matchwood if it had done anything to piss me off. Still cautious, moving silently on my bare feet, I ventured out into a dimly lit corridor, carrying one of the ceiling brackets as a weapon, just in case I wasn't as alone as I thought. I opened another couple of doors to find the same set up as my old homestead, but with empty cages.

At the end of the corridor, a thick door led through to a more cheerful area. Crew quarters, a couple of bunkrooms for the guards, single rooms for the officers, a recreation area, a couple of offices, a kitchen and dining area. They all appeared abandoned, the bedrooms stripped of personal belongings. The common areas while not trashed were at least in some disarray. My captors had bugged out in a big hurry when they left me to die of thirst.

Speaking of thirst, I stopped in the kitchen for a while and ate and drank. I found the store cupboard held enough food to last me for months. I didn't intend to stay that long.

~/~/~

Once I'd eaten, I felt better and ready to start making plans. I continued to explore and found the control room. I checked the power levels first and saw I had plenty. I adjusted the heat and light. Then I took a look at where the hell I actually was.

An underground complex on a barren rock, some kind of big asteroid or small rogue moon. It floated a couple of light years from Chiamajan space in neutral, undisputed, uninteresting territory. I knew now what to call my new home.

A black prison.

Small units where especially interesting prisoners could be kept and interrogated outside of the system. Prisoners nobody officially knew about. Military Intelligence and High Command denied the existence of black prisons of course, at least of ones that held human prisoners, but soldiers whispered about them. I almost felt flattered that High Command considered me special enough to put me in one.

When I'd done preening about how bad to the bone I must be, I deflated my ego and checked the log for this station, looked for the last entry.

Major Imtiaz's face popped up on the screen. He looked tense as he reported that as per High Command's general order he and his staff were evacuating the unit.

"We are leaving the prisoner behind as ordered," he said. He didn't look that happy about it, credit to him. "I obey that order under protest. Repeat, I am leaving the prisoner behind under protest." He frowned a moment, looking thoughtful, then shook his head and signed off. The screen went black. What had gone through his mind in that moment? Had he considered disobeying orders and taking me along? More likely he'd considered finishing me off quick rather than leaving me to die slowly. Some things are a step too far even for a torturer. I checked for the general order he'd mentioned and felt myself go cold as I read it.

A recall order.

All Earth units to come home. Every last one. Right now. Fast as possible. In addition, treat all alien troops from the big four as hostile.

The Prophecy.

Ilyan had been right and High Command finally believed, probably too late to do anything about it. The prophecy was coming true and they had started to scramble to do what Ilyan had told them to do a year ago.

Right at that moment, I didn't care. Because I had only one aim in mind. I had a general order of my own.

To find Tesla.

The prison didn't have a distress beacon. Hardly surprising since it didn't officially exist. However, it did have powerful scanners, which let me see the comings and goings for a long way around. I set them to scan for ships and prepared the comms equipment to contact anybody I liked the look of and I waited.

I waited for almost a month. I slept with an alarm set to wake me if anything showed up on the scanner. I slept restlessly, dreaming too often of digging in the earth with my hands. Sometimes I considered taking a sedative from the medical unit to knock me cold. But I feared sleeping through the scanner alarm.

I spent hours every day exercising, working hard to get back into top shape, ready for the mission ahead. That's how I thought of it. A mission. Perhaps the most important one of all. No. I had failed at the most important mission. Now I had to succeed at this one to redeem that failure.

Early on in the month I had some other preparations for the mission to take care of.

High Command must have Tesla living some place under an assumed identity. If I'd been Maiga, I could have broken into High Command's intelligence networks and tracked him down. But she had been the expert on that, not me. I needed someone to do it for me. And that meant I needed money. Well, as it happened, I had money.

I'd saved most of my pay since I was sixteen. When I joined the group Maiga stashed it away for me in secret accounts, to secure it when High Command froze my old accounts. She did the same for all of us. Now I started moving my money to where it would be ready and waiting for me once I got off this rock.

To find Tesla I'd happily spend every last cent.

~/~/~

Twenty-seven days after I escaped from my cage the alarm woke me from an uneasy sleep. I raced naked to the control room and the scanners showed me the prettiest sight I'd seen in a while. A small but fast ship. The database listed it as a registered Sylebine trader.

Sylebine. I smiled. Sylebine stayed relentlessly neutral in all wars, interested only in trade. Not grasping, they were famed for their generosity. They just seemed to view trading like a game. Once they cinched a deal they almost lost interest in the money and went looking for their next sale.

Someone once told the Sylebine never ignored a cry for help, since increasing "goodwill" was one of their most cherished ambitions, almost a religious obligation. Even if you had no money right now they'd be nice to you on the general principle that you might have money one day and you'd remember them.

I liked the Sylebine. Right now, I liked them so much I'd sleep with them on the first date.

I sent out a distress call to the ship and it responded at once, changing course towards me even before we finished a brief audio conversation. I had an hour before it arrived, so ran around putting on clothes and gathering up anything valuable or interesting I could find to offer to my rescuer. By the time his ship landed I stood ready to leave, with a nice stash of goodies to present to him.

The airlock cycled and the Sylebine trader stepped out. He walked on three limbs and helped me gather up my gear with the other three. Along with never ignoring a cry for help the Sylebine loved a good sob story, but I feared my real one might make him nervous. So I weaved a tale about this station being a listening post, manned single handed on rotation. But my relief hadn't come, and with all these terrible rumours I heard on the broadcasts...

"I understand," said my new friend, sympathy in his large golden coloured eyes as he helped me load my gear and offerings onto his ship. He smiled through a face of soft blue-grey fur. "I am pleased to help. And to have a companion. Or it would be a long and lonely trip to Olojimi."

"Oh, you're going to Hollow Jimmy?" I couldn't keep the grin off my face. Perfect, just perfect.

~/~/~

So I set off for Hollow Jimmy with a Sylebine, whose name I couldn't pronounce. He said most of his people couldn't pronounce it either and that his friends just called him Ik. Although small, I found his ship fairly comfortable. The grav field was weaker than earth normal, which made me worry about my muscles wasting. I'd have to keep up a strict exercise regime.

Ik made a pleasant companion, chatty, funny, and full of stories about his travels. I taught him to play cards and soon felt glad we played only for fun and not money. I should have known a salesman would have a good poker face.

It took us three weeks to get to Olojimi. We had a couple of stops on the way, on planets and stations where Ik had sales meetings. Several times I went with him. I thought only to help out by carrying his sample cases for him, but he said later that my presence meant he could go to some places he might have been afraid to go without my protection.

"I'm not a good choice of bodyguard, Ik." I said to him, when he told me this while we sat in a café after one such meeting.

"But you humans are so famous for being tough," he said, frowning, seemed slightly puzzled by my attitude. "Isn't it true what they say? That on Earth everyone is a soldier?"

"Not quite," I said, thinking of Ilyan. "Not quite everyone."

~/~/~

The closer we got to Hollow Jimmy the more I started to think and plan, and the more I started to brood. Ik noticed it of course. At first, I'd made an effort to enjoy myself with him, to forget the empty sky, even briefly. But it became too hard and my grief and pain were impossible to conceal.

Poor Ik did his best to deal with it. More than once, I woke from a nightmare to find him stroking my hair and singing some soothing tune he admitted parents crooned to their children back home on Sylebine.

When we reached Olojimi, nearly a month after he picked me up, having to say goodbye to him made me sorry.

"Jadeth," he said to me, in his quite good Earth standard, as I packed my gear. "Things are about to go very badly for your people."

"I know." I checked the pistol I'd bought one on of our stops and put it into a holster on my hip. Ik looked at it worried. He didn't like weapons much.

"You are sad, Sergeant Jadeth, I know this." I looked up into his golden eyes, thought they seemed sad too. "You are looking for something. I wish I could help you find what you look for."

"You have helped me, Ik," I said, straightening up and put on a long dark grey coat I'd found in the prison. I'd had to patch a bullet hole in the back of it.

"You can work for me, if you want, Jadeth," Ik said, as I heaved my pack onto my shoulders. "You have seen that sometimes I go with my money to dangerous places and I need a bodyguard -"

"No!" I snapped, and then bit my lip. I can't do that job again. Can't let someone trust me to protect him. I'd let Ik down, just as I'd let Ilyan down. "Sorry, Ik, but no. Thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I have something important I must do." I held out my hand to him. He understood the gesture and took my hand. His soft and silky fur tickled my palm. "Goodbye, Ik. Good health and goodwill."

He nodded his head, a back and forth rather than up and down motion, that made the light glint off his fur.

"Good luck to you, Jadeth. Good health and goodwill."

I marched away. Good health I had, I'd never been fitter, but goodwill, that I had only a very small supply of.

~/~/~

Hollow Jimmy had changed. It always used to be full of human soldiers on leave, looking for fun. But now only the civilian humans that lived on the station and a small number of soldiers remained, the soldiers waiting for transport home. They were tense and quiet and wore "kill you if you look at me funny" expressions on their faces.

I made the bank my first stop and soon had my money in good, hard cash. Then I took a taxi to a coffee shop and on the way told the taxi driver that I was a man in the market for some very hard to obtain information and could pay well for it. I sat at a table outside the coffee shop and waited.

Thirty minutes and two cups of coffee later, a woman sat down at my table. I eyed her suspiciously. She wore her greying hair cropped short, like many women soldiers, but looked past military age. She could be intelligence of course, but so could any body around here.

"Morning," she said, stirring an espresso she had brought with her to the table. "What do you need?"

"Your name for a start," I said.

"Oh, you think my name is useful information to you, do you?"

Oh great, one of those conversations. Like talking to Esha, only even more fun.

"Are you any good?" I asked.

She sat back, looking smug, crossed her legs and brushed some imaginary dust off the knee of her dark grey pants.

"You tell me, Jadeth."

I gasped and stared at her. She must be military intelligence. My hand reached instinctively for my pistol.

"Oh, keep your knickers on, Sergeant, I'm not a spook." She sipped her espresso and put the cup back down. "Any more."

I relaxed a tiny bit. She probably already knew what I wanted. But I got out my snapper and she took out hers and let me send across all the information I had on Tesla.

"Tell me where this man is."

"Ah, Tesla, ex-intelligence analyst, fugitive."

"Ex-fugitive."

She nodded. "Friend of the Prophet --"

"I know who he is." I cut her off. "Tell me where he is."

"Cost you fifty thousand. Half now."

"That's pretty steep."

"Did you hear me say this would be easy? You did not. Fifty k. Half now."

I sighed and handed over the money. She made it disappear some place inside her jacket.

"Meet you here tomorrow, same time," she said, glancing at her watch. She started to rise, but I grabbed her wrist.

"I need a guarantee you're not going to be on the next transport out of here with my money."

She stared at me. "Are you stupid? Don't you know what it's like for humans out there right now? We're best off right here on neutral territory." She pulled her hand away from me and stood up. "See you tomorrow." She shoved her snapper in her pocket and looked me over critically. "You need a haircut." She walked away.

~/~/~

I went shopping. First, I sold some stuff I didn't need then bought a few things I did. I managed to put together a full infantry uniform, from boots to helmet. I hung onto the big coat though so I could be a soldier or not as it suited me.

After I ate dinner, I took a hotel room in a cash only; no questions asked kind of establishment. I slept light as usual. Not only because of the dreams, but because I had to listen out for trouble, even in my sleep. However, nobody tried to slaughter me in my bed and I woke up safe in the morning.

I showered and gathered up my gear and set out to get some food and start investigating transport options. I wanted to leave as soon as the spook gave me the information. If military intelligence spotted me on the station, I'd end up dead in an alleyway, just like Rin. Even after I paid the rest of the fee for the information I still had enough cash to fly to Tesla's bolthole. If I couldn't find a commercial transport going that way I'd hire someone to take me. I thought briefly about maybe even hiring Ik and his fast little ship. But I decided against that. I liked him too much to drag him any deeper into the disaster area I called a life.

The spook turned up as arranged and at once snapped some data over to me. A planet, co-ordinates, pictures of a house, maps of the area, details about security arrangements, and a couple of fake IDs that would get me there. Well worth the rest of money I handed over to her.

"You didn't get that haircut I see," she said as I reviewed the data and she counted the money.

"What are you, my CO?" I looked up as I spoke. "This is great, exactly what I --" She had gone. I shook my head and put the snapper away. I had plenty of time to study up on the fine detail on the journey.

I'm coming to get you, Tesla.